The traditional account of the political history of Tirol can be briefly summed as follows: almost all of its contributors were themselves Tirolean—German or Italian—and most of them were nationalist. As such, the core of their output, though large and impressive, is at the same time distorted. This historiography comprises essentially two antithetical narratives: a conservative German Tirolean history (roughly coextensive with present-day Südtirol and Tirol) versus liberal Italian Tirolean history (roughly coextensive with present-day Trentino). Only in the last generation has the dominance of this historiography begun to waver. The change has followed less from any noticeable drop in the proportion of historians from old Tirol than from their burying of old differences. As more and more descry a common heritage, a single narrative is emerging.

At the forefront of this revisionist school stands the Centro per gli studi storico italo-germanici located in Trent. Recently it undertook a project to explore early modern political relations between the prince-bishopric of Trent and the county of Tirol through the study of a central institution hitherto largely ignored by scholars, namely, the Diet of Innsbruck, the representative assembly of the land. The present volume is the first result of this project. Its heart is a Herculean achievement of research and editing. For the first time, documents—memorials, supplications, letters, and protests—covering Italian Tirolean relations with the estates from 1413 to 1790 are exhaustively itemized in five catalogues by archival collection: one from the Tiroler Landesarchiv (with German translations of the Italian) in Innsbruck, four from the Archivio di Stato, Archivio Diocesano Tridentino and Archivio storico del Comune in Trent. The more than one thousand entries each reference a primary source, often with detailed summaries; researchers may have no need to consult the original. Editorial notes supplement the catalogues. A second volume shall take up the sources through the nineteenth century.

More than a compilation of primary sources, the volume also contains four related articles. Two describe the history and organization of the five archival collections, offering rare guidance in navigating the hazards of researching a land now overlapping two countries and spanning three provinces. Claudia Feller handles the one in Innsbruck; Katia Occhi, those in Trent. Two other articles provide critical analysis. In his treatment of modern Tirolean historiography, Marco Bellabarba diagnoses how it first went wrong. Initially in the late eighteenth century, scholars laid no particular emphasis on the ethnic divide between German and Italian Tiroleans, seeing them rather as parts of a greater political, institutional, and cultural unity. But in response to the 1848 revolution, contemporaries laid the foundation of contrasting nationalist German or Italian Tirolean accounts, accounts that soon drowned out and ultimately silenced the original. Thus, it is this almost forgotten approach that Bellabarba calls us to revive and extend. To this end, he adds, the long neglected documents of the Tirolean diet have been collected, catalogued, and published.

Where Bellabarba gives an eloquent plea—and justification—for the return to an integrative view of the land, Marcello Bonazza lays out a preliminary framework for its political interpretation, from Maximilian I to the Vormärz. His central premise is the enduring success of the various Italian Tirolean actors—prince-bishop, privy council, aristocracy, cathedral chapter, secular and regular clergy, Confini italiani, towns, and countryside—to protect their old rights and privileges. From this follows his novel conception of the larger Tirolean political process, the outcome of “a sort of triangular institutionalization:” the count of the Tirol versus estates; the count versus prince-bishops of Trent and Brixen; and the prince-bishops versus estates (42). While the model needs further corroboration, it allows for the true complexity of Tirolean structures and certainly marks an advance from the traditional one-dimensional version of an all-powerful count dominating the prince-bishops and estates.

Perhaps the greatest merit of the volume is its very methodology: Tirolean sources regardless of provenance are placed side by side and equally weighted. The effect on the mind of the reader is subtle, for the inner linguistic and territorial borders of the land perforce recede to the background; and the way the Habsburgs, bishops, and estates saw the land—as a heterogeneous political commonwealth—comes to the fore. That said, and as Bonazza observes, the records themselves represent only part of the relations between the Italian and German Tirol, and, dare I say it, can make for tiresome reading, relating seemingly endlessly repetitive haggles over the allocation and mustering of troops, internal and external trading restrictions on wine and timber, and, above all, taxation. Students of high politics or religion will find little grist for the mill here.

For anyone studying the Tirolean political process, this book is essential reading. Not only a convenient tool of research, this volume offers a refreshingly comprehensive view of the subject, which should stimulate its further clarification. Both the primary and secondary literature plainly shows the deep impact of German Tirol on Italian Tirolean political development, while amply suggesting the deep impact of Italian Tirol on German Tirolean political development. Yet that crucial topic has hitherto received only piecemeal attention. It behooves more Innsbruck scholars to join their counterparts south of the Brenner Pass in the discovery of their shared past.